Jason Simpson’s no stranger to filling multiple openings on his University of Tennessee Martin coaching staff year after year.
After all, Simpson’s ‘Coaching Tree’ is discussed widely in college football circles – and professional ones.
So when Simpson lost his defensive coordinator, Chris Polizzi, Monday in a bit of rough timing, as Polizzi accepted the defensive coordinator post at Tulsa, Simpson wasted no time in finding his new defensive signal-caller for the two-time Ohio Valley Conference champion Skyhawks.
Sources tell FootballScoop that Brandon Butcher, who spent the 2022 season as UT Martin’s running game coordinator, is being elevated to the defensive coordinator role.
A Coastal Carolina graduate who has climbed through the coaching ranks at both his alma mater and Southern Mississippi, Butcher has been on Simpson’s Skyhawks’s staff since 2020.
So Simpson has great comfort with Butcher, and Butcher – whose name began more prominently circulating in college football openings earlier this year for Football Championship Subdivision defensive coordinator vacancies – knows Simpson’s expectations and owns experience from Martin’s sterling two-year run across the 2021-22 seasons.
Butcher is particularly skilled in working with linebackers and nickelbacks, and he’s helped spearhead some excellent special teams work at UTM, most notably leading the Skyhawks to an OVC-best six blocked kicks in the shortened 2020 season.
Simpson and the Skyhawks open their 2023 campaign Sept. 2 at back-to-back defending national champion Georgia; they return home for consecutive tilts against Missouri State and Houston Christian in the ensuing weeks.